NINETEENTH TALK 38l

men aside and make them free-thinkers. I can
assure you that there is no evidence whatever, which
you would accept at this day about any other subject,
that Christ ever lived at all on earth. The only
certain evidence is the clairvoyant evidence. There-
fore they ought to be very grateful to us who give
them that testimony. They are not, yet, short of
that, everything that you take up to prove it breaks
in your hands, and there seems to be great deal of
definite proof to the contrary, certainly with regard
to the data which are commonly accepted. If you
went back further you would find nothing to contra-
dict it; but there is no certainty, there is nothing to
prove it. Proof is very difficult about a thing that
happened long ago. But at any rate there is nothing
to which you could trust yourself in a court of law.
There is nothing which in ordinary history you would
accept, save only the clairvoyant evidence. So you
see that there is quite a good deal, which, though
true, is believed on insufficient grounds, and so to
those people it is a superstition. You remember the
teaching of the Lord Buddha in that respect, very
fine teaching it was. I wish very much, I have often
wished, that our Christian friends had been as com-
mon-sense in their methods as were members of that
older religion, the Buddhist. The teaching of the
Buddha was so pre-eminently common-sense. You
may remember at the Council, called after His death,.
to determine which of the many reports current